


Here Be Monsters

by dropout_ninja



Category: Original Work
Genre: Again it's a pretty dark fic, Blood and Injury, Boats and Ships, Dark, Fantasy, Grand Escapes, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Injury, Loss of Limbs, Magic, Mutilation, Not Beta Read, Original work - Freeform, Psychological Horror, Revenge, Sea Monsters, Shapeshifting, Torture, Warning tags are for the first chapter mainly, heed the tags, hurt/some comfort, so just tread carefully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29455299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropout_ninja/pseuds/dropout_ninja
Summary: A ship of Bleeders nets the ghost of their captain's history, to the misfortune of every party involved.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	1. Shall We Not Revenge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SerialKillerQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerialKillerQueen/gifts).



> A gift to @serialkillerqueen, the enabler of my horrible content- I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Please heed the tags. While the violence here is not described in detail, it's very much present. For that alone, I put the graphic descriptions of violence tag warning up to be safe.  
> First chapter is potentially skippable if one just wants to see the further chapters. The most uncomfortable moments/graphic parts of this chapter occur between the sentences "The noise of footsteps came closer..." (start of a scene break) to "If anything, there was a cold finality now" (near the end of a scene break, or just skip to that scene break itself).

The first boat to go was recorded by a second one near enough to watch the disaster unfold. 

It was, in actuality, the first boat _recorded_ to be destroyed in that manner. There had been others that disappeared after leaving the docks, never to be heard of again, that now were suspected to have met such a fate.

As with humanity, there were quickly stories made over those years with unexplained disappearances. They invented creatures at sea. The Kraken. Things from the deep that waited to drag ships under. Here Be Monsters. 

The truth of it were not tentacled beasts or sirens. They were a different kind of monster. They were real. 

The records contained those words of witnesses. Stories of a creature with dull scales and plates, spines, sharp trails of fins, a vast tail, thats distinct form could not be known as the water roiled around it and the ship being attacked splintered, cracked, tore apart- dragged under.

Such a story brought attention.

Urgency as well as fascination. 

They were given basic names, the titles of sea monsters.

When the first true contact occurred, they gave names themselves to listening humans. 

The Ri'Eisc were the people of the sea. They held kingdoms both in and out of water. Built of tall coral atop reefs or crawling onto islands. Newer structures than those swam in the deeps below. The Ri'Eisc had wanted to expand. And they held the opportunity.

The monstrous size seen by unlucky boats was their natural form, but the creatures were shape shifters. Rather like tales of mermaids and sirens, the Ri'Eisc adjusted to life above the water. And the spindly humanoids their bodies were forced to become upon leaving the sea water may have been tall, alien, intimidating, but it held two interests to humans in that early time: they were easier to fight, kill, like this and they could speak.

There were a series of royals within the ranks of the Ri'Eisc. These Regales had allowed some talk of ceasing an attack on ships. In return, they were meant to cease their own push for land. It was a deal bound to fail on both sides. It hardly helped that those few Ri'Eisc killed in scuffles were found to be rather desirable. The bones taken were strong, weaponizable. The fat was useful in soaps en masse, in brothers, in waxes. And the blood...

There was a medical breakthrough from that blood alone. 

While they were hardly officially legal, bleeders had grown to a sizable organization fueling a happy market.

So tensions hardly grew friendlier even after both beings learned to communicate to one another. 

Bran Modred was there when they boiled over. He'd volunteered for it, in fact. A young man with no family and no close friends, Bran had thought enlisting would give him room and board and purpose. He felt no issue with the mission itself. They were meant to lure a Regale into one of the Ri'Eisc's terrestrial palaces and kill it there to topple internal leadership.

If only plans like that could execute as smoothly as they were verbalized.

* * *

Bran had been lucky.

Or unlucky.

It was still up in the air until he lost or won this fight.

While the rest of those around him had been in the thick of battle, he'd slipped away and sped for the entry to the royal chamber before it could shut and lock. He'd managed that much. Bran had always been a quick sprinter. He'd used that skill in the little gangs kids made to fight other neighborhoods.

The doors' closing had occurred after he made it in and the locks would slow down any aide from reaching him.

But Bran was young. Proud. 

The Ri'Eisc in front of him looked impressed at how he'd forced himself into the room. This one stood over many others and certainly held height on himself. A tail swayed around, spines running dangerously along it. Green eyes looked flat in their momochromous coloration, but the lens that blinked in front even without eyelids closing gave them a distinctly liquid feel. The scales and plating running over it were deep blue and light green. The spines of fins flared out behind its head dangerously.

Like a crown, Bran thought. How fitting for a Regale. 

He'd set himself into a combat stance. 

The Regale had laughed at him. Complimented his moxie. Then let a jut of bone tear from his inner arm into the claws of one hand until it was its own blade.

They met. Clashed. Retreated. 

Repeated. 

Bran had considered he had a chance because he felt he was doing rather well. But he took closer note of the movements of the Ri'Eisc. The expressions. The choreography. 

He was being played with.

Infuriated, he tried to press closer and was only cut again and again for the efforts. 

Until he watched the playful movement coming towards him, stepped in close instead of moving to a side as he was being directed to, and carved up the royal's face. Metal cut over where the cheekbone of a human would be, over the lens of an eye, up the plate above. The Regale screamed, enraged. Kicked the human's ankle, slammed his chest when he hunched forward, hit, cut, hit, until the time came that Bran did not stand again when falling last. 

And there was another noise in the chamber now. The doors, pounding. Straining. Yells from behind. They would not hold long.

The Regale looked to the opponent who'd managed to draw blood in fair battle. 

Bran saw intent in that stare and paled.

"I would leave you, but your allies are far too close," the Ri'Eisc said plainly. 

There were the starts of protests but the Regale spoke over them.

"They will need a distraction."

And a concussed and tired human wasn't enough of an emergency to slow any down. 

Bran tried to move. To talk. To do anything that would stop himself from becoming an emergency in so much danger that his fellow fighters would have to stop to stabilize him.

The air was full of words, words, pleading to just let him go, he wouldn't stop its departure, he was a kid with a life ahead, stop, stop, STOP-

And they caused only the slightest hesitation. 

The human spoke truth about age, about having a future that would be upturned by any crippling that happened here. 

But oily blood was dripping past a painful sting into the Ri'Eisc's eye from where that young human had carved his blade. And the pounding of steps grew nearer, too near, to join those already trying to break the door. 

Bran had kept speaking, unable to stop a slew of words even as the Regale stepped in, raised his blade, and shoved it against the man's leg. Only then did words cease- replaced instead with strangled screams that did not stop the other from hacking again and again until bone broke and sharpness broke through muscle. 

The Regale stepped away to flee down his hall. He spared only one last look at the blood pooling fast beneath the human even as his own continued to trickle against the lens of his eye.

* * *

They'd found him only seconds later, not that he felt it had been anything brief at the time itself. Bran had been in an unresponsive state, shrieking and twisting away from pain but hardly conscious enough of his surroundings to understand a word said to him. He remained thus even as one of the humans moved to cauterize the stump and after as they carried him to one of the vessels that would bring him to a field medic to raise his chances of survival. 

Regale Seraliane Coth was not caught. His hope to delay the soldiers by forcing them to tend to one of their own had paid off.

It had been one of the first questions Bran had consciously asked after he'd woken enough from his procedures to ask anything of substance. 

And even there, laying on the cot of a medical wing with only a stump of leg itching and aching and feeling ghostly stabs on occasion, he obsessed over that thought. He was angry, furious, that the royal target had escaped with his life.

The Regale had a chance to leave and Bran wouldn't have been able to stop that. He had that chance. He had- and he- instead, he wouldn't just let him go defeated alone, no, he had to add, he had to take something so very important to function, he- he-

The fevers hardly improved clarity of thought. Infection came close to killing him.

Maybe it would have been easier on both if infection and fever had.

Instead, Bran Modred was fitted with a prosthetic and released months later. The Ri'Eisc had vanished from their known kingdom halls. He watched a few years pass while the creatures began a slow morph into legend. Feared. Unseen except as corpses and even those were always the airborne forms they wore outside the water. Those, Bran had seen first hand and alive. Fought. Drew blood on. It would take a boat of some caliber to fight a true Ri'Eisc's form first hand.

It would...

* * *

He found them soon after. They were calling themselves Flitchers. Most just thought of them by the name their profession had always been called: Bleeders.

Some activists hated them. The Ri'Eisc were thought to be sentient. Bran had seen sentience when fighting the Regale. But that sentience had just been used to cause him pain that would never go away. If killing a sentient like that was murder, he found himself startlingly fine with that.

There were recruiters at the docks. They weren't real bright and flashy in advertising because they didn't want to draw poor attention from those who couldn't accept their job as a profession (but accepted plenty of their supplies after their finds had been dumped on shops to sell). 

The man who talked with him gave him a rundown of the job. Asked him for former navy or marine history. Decided that, prosthetic or not, he'd fit fine enough as a Flitcher.

Bran signed onto his ship that day. He had no family to tell or mull over a decision with and had always felt more at home on the water.

His captain (since he now was such a role and Bran was his subordinate) drilled over the bleeding process with him with the first Ri'Eisc they netted. The body between them distracted him from the words the first time. It stopped after a few more. And soon he was able to bleed their catches without supervision. The words stuck with him.

_'They don't die real easy. You can cut all their limbs off and still they'll take hours to die from bleeding. Dump 'em in the water injured with a thousand cuts and they'll be attacking a moment later. Can't trust 'em to die. So carve deep, boy. Split them open in every spot. Rip and tug the fat and bone and any special organ out. You do that, the bleeding process ain't so prolonged.'_

They stuck with him for years, just as the nightmares and daytime dreams of a different nature did.

* * *

His position crawled upward. A decade passed. A second. Until eventually Bran Mordred had taken his own ship and led it as the captain. 

The crew did well. They kept the ship stable and repaired it after any Ri'Eisc damaged it. They had learned to use harpoons fast and let the sharp serrated poles drag the needed nets to pull one out of the water. Every few months, they returned to a dock to unload their catches. Fats. Organs. Bones. The blood so desired in medicine.

The floor of their bleeding bay was forever stained. Barrels and iceboxes held that which was pulled from a corpse before the rest was tossed into the sea. 

Captain Bran Modred ran a good business. But he always hoped for something else: 

he dreamed that one day, he'd net the beast that had taken his limb from him. 

* * *

Their catch came at night. While the sea rolled black, the dulled sides of a Ri'Eisc had been noticed in contrast to the inky darkness and, in a rush, was harpooned. As it was dragged from the water, its shape shrank and shifted downward into the airborne form that bled as similarly as the grand beast had from its pricking injuries. The wounds of one form moved to the next, no matter what the man who’d once hired him had implied.

The nets hit the deck with a thump from the body within. Water seeped from the ropes to the wood, mixed with traces of fluid from the catch itself.

Flitchers jabbed poles and blades in. Standard. Ri'Eisc could still fight and kill with injury and they could not get close enough to drag one from a net when that meant risking it snapping their necks and fleeing overboard. 

And many found it easier to swallow if the thing was dead before they began bleeding it.

Bran watched. Watched, waited, apathetic to the scene and to the waves that slipped over to spray them all with briny water. Apathetic until...

The coloration of the thing's hide and scales were difficult to distinguish in the darkness, but he had seen enough to feel a dread, sense a warning of impending doom. 

The captain stepped close, the uneven footsteps of boot and prosthetic hitting the wood with growing strength until he was close. 

The thing in the net flailed. Bran took one of the rods from a shipman next to him- Owain, he thought the boy's name was, but with the water dripping down all their faces and the night offering little light outside lanterns, who could tell?- and shoved it hard against the body.

Tangled hands tried to push it back but the efforts were weaker under the stress of capture and injuries. While the muscles of the body were still ready to fight again, the Ri'Eisc let itself go quiet for now.

The rod pulled back and the Ri'Eisc let it. Bran leaned over and used the pole to push netting up to expose the face of their catch. Or, at least, one part of that face. The part that mattered to him for identification.

The eyes that stared back were cautious and afraid and, most importantly, unidentical. A white scar ran through the scales above and below the left and that left milky damage on the otherwise monochromatic eye itself.

There was a moment of still from both. Then the Ri'Eisc pushed further away in the tangled net, almost as if to get a better look at-

Both of those eyes widened at the sight of the prosthetic leg and this time the captain could read real terror in them.

Bran's own hands lunged forward briefly, digging past the chaos of the net and poles and injuries to grab at a scaly neck. To throttle the ghost, if just to see if it was really there. 

" _You-"_ his voice rasped. There was no savoring the panic on that face at confirmation of recognition. The lack of such was what let his grip loosen, enough for the Ri'Eisc to push away and for serated fangs to gnash at them. The effort failed to puncture his gloves. Bran retreated from the net, still mouthing that one word and almost swearing the other did the same.

As soon as the human was gone, their prey resumed a struggle. This time, the flailing held a new note of need. It continued on even after the weapons beating down on it would have brought most to despondent surrender, concussion or death. It was as if the Ri'Eisc- the Regale Seraliane Coth, finally brought back into human sights after decades of rumors of vessel destruction and otherwise hiding- was trying to provoke the latter fate.

So Bran ordered the rest to stop and turned to the soaked Owain and another shipmate to put them in charge of dragging the Ri'Eisc to the bleeding bay.

Not to start. 

Just to restrain.

Then to leave.

The orders were clear and loud. Seraliane twisted and fought after the nets were grabbed and tugged along. He'd heard those orders as well, after all.

* * *

Owain Lyon was unsure of what was happening. He'd worked this job for two years now and this was not the normal procedure.

The stained floor held metal rings and leather straps looped through them to keep a Ri'Eisc from moving while bleeding it. Each limb and tail was held, the torso strapped down, the forehead and crest kept immobile. 

All the fight from above was gone. The creature was...quiet. Owain felt uneasy at it. At the shuddering, the gasping, the way the chest moved so exaggeratedly and gils spasmed just to bring in air for those breaths. The eyes alternating from scanning the room (so evident in its purpose with the stains and hooks and tools of all lethal sorts) to squeezing shut. 

It wasn't settling. 

Owain was used to them being too concussed to do much or show much recognition of their room. They didn’t tend to react to everything, or he never noticed it before. If they all did, he- he wasn’t sure he would have stayed on, actually.

Instead of following that thought, Owain consider the way circumstances here were different. He would have wondered more about these strange happenstances, but everyone knew of the captain's bad blood with the supposed Ri'Eisc that had taken his leg long ago. The crew accepted the correlation.

Even if Owain felt unnerved leaving the room when each glance back showed the creature so alive and resigned to fear.

* * *

The noise of footsteps came closer, louder, from behind where the door had been locked minutes before. Each step held a different sound, a different weight, one a leg and one a fake. They came too slow. Purposefully. Meant to let suspense stew. And they arrived in Seraliane's restricted view too fast, too soon. 

The strap against his head wouldn't let him look anywhere but where his eyes could reach just by rotating. It made him wait until first a false leg and then the canvas trousers of the other arrived in his sights. 

The human was older now. Much older. There were creases on his skin, grayed frizz to his hair, a stoop in his back. 

Colder.

So much colder. 

He set down each item held with slow finality. A bucket, empty. A bucket of water. A bonesaw. A flattened metal box clamped around the handle of something obscured within. 

Seraliane wished himself dead.

Then the captain was kneeling too, with the slow of age and perhaps something else. Anticipation. Dragging out the moment. Maybe unease. Second thoughts. Seraliane could wish.

One hand took an ankle. Unstrapped it, repositioned it away from the other leg and strapped it down again. The Ri'Eisc's chest heaved. Bran watched the movement sharply.

The interaction was silent. With the blood to come, words would have been more than inappropriate. 

The human held out rubber for the creature to bite and hold: silent. He prepared the first leg for a cut and positioned the saw: silent. 

Their eyes met- one set steely and the other near rolling in anticipating fear- and held as though looking away would make the situation somehow worse: a silent agreement. 

It was difficult to keep eye contact with one being hurt. Tortured. Yet Bran only looked away for glances when preparing the next limb and held it even after Seraliane had started rapidly entering in and out of consciousness. He watched and Seraliane stared back in thoughtless desperation likewise. As though breaking the eye contact would make it worse. Make the human even more sadistic where here he was clinical.

It was faster with a saw than the sword once used on the human’s leg. Water was agony over the rawness. The heat that followed was worse still and yet Seraliane could not remain unconscious from it longer than a few brief seconds.

Legs, done, a payment for the single one stolen from the human once years before.

One. Two. One arm. Then two.

The stench of blood and urine and burning flesh. 

Foot to knee. Hand to elbow. Small looking now, disconnected. Dumped in a bucket. Carried to the deck and tossed away. 

More water. 

The cooling practically pointless, no matter how many rags were placed on wounds or his head. 

And still not death.

Bran took back the bit with only a grimace at the slime left on fingers afterwards. Never such an expression during the act itself. Fangs had cut deep in rubber, made it useless. It was thrown away. 

Nothing felt improved. 

If anything, there was a cold finality now. No future. No dream to hold onto, to imagine over and over, in day, in night, in conversations with others, distracted, while the ghost of a leg pained him and he burned with the idea of tearing the culprit's own away. No desire to drive him on. Nothing. Cold. 

This was supposed to erase all that remained and let him feel better. To stare into the eyes of this ghost and not flinch, not fear, not want to plead once more for an opponent that outmatched him to leave without crippling him. To lose that fear. To lose the helplessness by returning it twofold and more to the ghost haunting him and watching it despair instead.

It was supposed to take it all away. To burn out into ease, not cold.

He meant to slit the Regale's throat now and toss the corpse overboard. Even if the shapeshifter took on his more dangerous form, it would have had no limbs to steer or propel it. 

He could bring the creature back alive instead. Hand it to the highest bidding kingdom. Seal away the ending of an old war.

He cared for neither.

He cared not for _it_.

He wished it had never revealed itself in his ship's waters. 

They were resilient creatures. Even without the power to walk or crawl, to eat or drink with hands, to hold anything ever again, they could live. If existing without those features was life. 

Bran did not care anymore. 

He dragged the body to an unused room across from his own above deck. Dumped the feverish form into the hammock there. Left the bucket of dirty water and its rags inside to head for the men's quarters below and find one of them to pass this mess off to.

* * *

* * *

The human that entered so often was not the captain. It had the name 'Owain'. Such had been disclosed in awkward introduction.

Seraliane had almost gone sarcastic on the human, mentioned how he'd never dealt with such conversed introductions with one before. 

But he couldn't muster up enough to do so. So he'd listened to the awkward words and added nothing hostile or amused back.

Days passed in pain. More than the physical, however- there was this fate. He had not moved from the shelf bed constructed in here, a railing keeping him from tumbling to the ground. Owain kept more pillows on it than Seraliane would imagine would be on a ship like this. He would bring soups and water, read books aloud, fill the silence. All that which Seraliane could not do himself anymore.

Once, he'd asked why the human was bothering. Why his captain hadn't killed him yet. 

(Although he _had_ ; he was helpless, a shadow, unable to swim or return to the homes in the depths and sisters there ever again; the Regale was dead and only these pathetic remains were left, cursed to never swim again)

Owain could never keep eye contact, but here he was even more obvious in looking distinctly away.

"I don't understand either. We're Flitchers, Bleeders. We take Ri'Eisc on board to bleed 'em. Never kept one alive."

Perhaps he could be curious about what that would entail in human governances. Could wonder if his survival and imprisonment here were illegal. 

The energy for such curiosity couldn't rise above the grief he felt for his situation.

* * *

He'd stay hours. It was a little frustrating. He'd signed on to be a shipman, work above deck as a sailor. Not babysit a lump of a person. 

Not consider the type of creature itself a _person_ in the first place.

That evening, Owain paused the routine of dim, unfortunately dry reading to force a glance up (he did so hate to stare into flat dull green eyes; they were too self aware, judgmental, making his skin crawl and arms and legs feel funny in imagination of the other’s). His audience had gone quiet. Unconscious. He stepped away from the chair to peek closer and saw that the Ri'Eisc was sleeping. 

And it felt unsurprising to see that such sleep was not peaceful. There were tics, tensing even in dreams. He could see shoulders moving in uneven sobs.

The book was placemarked and set aside so that Owain could run from the room, run until he found a wastebin to hold his face over, until the air outside the forbidden room replaced that of the place within and he could pretend all was normal again.


	2. If You Wrong Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate ending, or rather continuation of the ending, that I decided to publish as well.  
> Warnings for this chapter and the next are far less uncomfortable. References to murder, torture, and mutilation are present but not shown 'on screen' other than a vague dream segment in the very first scene, and violent revenge is not the focus here.  
> Unbeta'd, mistakes are inevitably going to be present.

As they would for every catch, the Flitchers dragged their tangled nets below to the bleeding floor. Owain had no reason to think anything different of it. Had no reason to stall or to look at the Ri'Eisc's head just to double check that it had been killed above deck- and had no reason to fall back when conscious eyes met that attention. 

He wasn't supposed to note it.

The Ri'Eisc wasn't supposed to be awake, alive.

There wasn't supposed to be the urgency, and desperation, and words rather than animal noises bubbling out from an injured jaw for his ears to hear. 

Words, not noises. 

Expressions, horrified, resigned, tragic expressions, the urgency and desperation yes but worse, so worse, the _humanity_ from them all-

And the blood from his tools crawled up ungloved hands to his arms to drown him while the being wore the expressions of a human and asked him so clearly why it had to die.

Murder.

Murderer.

With a lurch of nausea, he tore from the vision. Panted, sweating, tangled in his hammock. Not on the bleeding floor. But still on a bleeder's ship. One he had not touched a harpoon or net on since being assigned by the captain to keep a former Ri'Eisc prince safe. It was hardly the job signed up for. It did everything needed to show what that job was, however. Painted pictures that made him sick and sent him into misery every night as he pictured face after imaginary face on the murder floor of a ship he lived on.

Owain may have awoken from the feverish dream but found himself within the nightmare still.

* * *

There had been a fraying for some time, but when those tethers snapped, it was hardly with either expectation or fanfare.

He stocked a raft, waited for night, waited waited waited. Days passed and some shipmates asked of him. Noticed that the tethers snapped, but knew not what those tethers even were. Tried to pry a state from him and Owain's mouth would open, his voice would deliver speech, and their worries would abade. Or they didn't, but no one had substance to their questions or concerns.

He didn't even think of those shipmates when the day with a distraction arrived.

Merely rushed for the locked room across from the captain's quarters, wrapped the inhabitant in enough blankets to carry his body in a sling without issue, and dropped the both of them into the smaller boat without mess.

The ship vanished from view and the Ri'Eisc took a break from looking out over the water (his home, the one they'd stolen) to stare at him with more bemusement than his situation ought to have left him with (Owain felt more nauseous at it than he would at seeing misery, though he couldn't pinpoint why the guilt grew so much worse when the other acted casual). There was a curiosity there, far too calm, too friendly (undeserved) and the stare burned him, made him think of the faces and bubbling words of his recurring dreams.

"What was your plan after this?" the other passenger asked casually.

His expression must have been answer enough: Owain had none.

He'd just needed as far from the bleeding ship as possible and that was as far as planning went in his frazzled mind.

* * *

They drifted nicely enough. Stopped at little isolated islands, managed to avoid a Ri'Eisc attack or human notice. Owain could feel an oppressive loneliness at the lifestyle alongside the strange euphoria of living as though no other but Seraliane was near him. Someone in a world so empty could be the master of their life. Someone in a world so empty could feel that massive, unknown emptiness of the universe crush them. It was hard to know if he felt better than ever before or if he was entirely miserable. 

It didn't matter, in the end, what he felt. So he supposed. He'd done this for Seraliane. Done it for absolution. There was Ri'Eisc blood on his hands, arms, everywhere. Gushed, splattering, all while he would saw and pull and cut apart without a thought other than it being his job to collect bone and blood. It layered up on him over victim after victim he'd never noticed as alive and then, stripped out of that defensive ignorant thought, it drowned him. This was all he could do.

Leave.

Drift.

Feeling as helpless in his plans as his companion physically was. 

Out of the two of them, Owain had started feeling that Seraliane was actually the less scared and hopeless member of this aimless journey.

* * *

He was feeding Seraliane one day when the discussion came. 

On what to do next. On why they were even at this state at all.

"I can't just dump you in the water. That wouldn't let you, um, heal," Owain had admitted his lack of direction, sitting back on his heels and letting the spoon of oats fall towards the floor of the boat as his arms fell defeatedly.

The Ri'Eisc narrowed his eyes, the flat green and scarred one both. 

"No. That isn't how we work."

Owain felt his neck prickling at being stared at. He wished the other would stop, but Seraliane seemed to be intent on staring. Almost as though to prove a point. To show unflinching acknowledgement of the human nearby. As though he still had the power to be confident and proud as a threat when he had no hands to claw with or feet to kick. 

Yet in those moments when Seraliane was staring away, it was no better for his peace of mind. The Ri'Eisc would gaze into the water over the side of their boat or at the waves when seated on an island's beach. Longing. For a home that Owain couldn't give him. Or else the prideful gaze was gone because the former regale was sleeping, nearing sleep, drifting in low conscious thought. And then all pain would be on display. Remembered agony, remnant fears, in scrunched posture and masked sobs. Owain could not stand that either. 

There was no winning comfort, was there?

(There was no deserving such, not after living as a Flitcher)

"How else do I get you back then?" he asked, not managing to stop himself from throwing his arms in the air and sending oat particles flying from the spoon. 

At that, Seraliane tilted his head and the crests above his eyes shifted as a human's brows would. All in order to look at him with amusement and incredulity. It made Owain feel small.

He, a lone human. Young, foolish. Running some sort of fools errand as a child would on an open sea that would someday swallow him. As though he wasn't out here, lost from humanity, _because_ of this man, because he'd chosen to aide him over his shipmates. As though he was being stupid and funny and amusing rather than trying to help.

"I just want you in your cities again. That's what you want. So how do I swim you down, if you won't heal in water enough to regrow your- erm, fins?" Owain said after their back and forth with more hostility than he meant to. He was defensive. To a fault, likely. (To the fault that he would ignore his conscience screaming when he bled his first Ri'Eisc and each after)

"Flippers, really," Seraliane corrected with thick amusement. "Fin is correct enough. My word for it would be rather unpronounceable in this body."

Just casual speech of how the shapeshifter's secondary body was not that which the Ri'Eisc felt most at home in. As casual as he was when joking. 

Perhaps it too was defensive. Hiding the loss of those limbs by laughing over terminology. 

"You can't swim without them."

Not quite a question. 

Seraliane's expression in return was unreadable.

"No."

There was another glance, to the water. It reminded him of an earlier statement, said over a shared smuggled bottle of rum. Owain had watched the other lean far too close to the edge of their raft to be safe for one inebriated, all in order to stare down into luminescent coral. He hadn’t been sure that alcohol would even work on the man’s anatomy. It wasn’t as though he’d ever thought to offer a drink to a Ri’Eisc before when working a job that treated them as thoughtless animals. But, based on how unbalanced Seraliane went, how he looked ready to tip over the rail accidentally, it seemed it did indeed inebriate them as it did humans.

_"Terrible...to be so close and..."_

And the coral had looked so beautiful that night. Surreal. A peace he did not witness on a ship of Flitchers. They never approached reefs, lagoons, bays, never stopped to see the shallower sea. They remained over dark water, waiting to net prey. 

They had stolen both the shallow jewels and deep basins from every Ri'Eisc they tugged onto that ship.

He'd ruined the peace of the night there when the alcohol laying unsettled in his stomach decided to protest. Guilt had made his stomach queasy over the weeks, no matter what he'd eaten or not. 

Ah, but now was not that night. Now was not a time for that pressure to swallow him up. He was working out a plan and hardly needed to weaken up.

"What about islands? Didn't you all used to have places on land?"

There'd been a war, at one point. He'd been a child for it. By the time he'd come of age, Ri'Eisc were nothing like a humanized enemy to wage war on. A shift in perspective to be sure, he thought. One he'd missed entirely when viewing the species and signing on as a Flitcher.

"If you tell me how to find one, maybe we can meet someone else there. Or at least a...road? of a kind? that I could try to carry you down while swimming. There's got to be doctors down there or something..."

Not that doctors could do much. Attach prosthetics on his legs, but those would just break off if he shifted into the monstrous sea-based form he had, wouldn't they? The fins of that form were massive compared to humanoid legs and no strapped on wooden or metal pegs would shift with them. 

Unless the Ri'Eisc were magical enough to do more with their medicine than that. Even with the properties of Ri'Eisc blood, human medicine couldn't regrow limbs. The closest they'd gotten were prosthetics that were more flexible and complex in design. But that was not to say the creatures didn't have more practice with such magic blood to work with, or designs that could wear the nerves chopped apart, or-

Seraliane interrupted the thought process to tilt his head the full other way.

"You thought you could swim me into the abyss?" he asked with unhidden incredulity. 

The human shifted awkwardly instead of verbally answering. The other laughed.

"You are an idiot, Owain."

* * *

Idiot or not, he insisted on trying. They traced a path of islands until they could find one with Ri'Eisc architecture on it. Most landborne palaces had been emptied after the war. Humans, when they dared to travel onto the sea, ran risks of being capsized and destroyed. Ri'Eisc, in a similar pattern, abandoned land knowing that to stay upon it would mean falling to human weapons. They played a balanced game on their boards of advantage and only there. 

A _game_ was the wrong term to use. 

Owain said as much once. Not meaning too. But he had interrupted his own reading aloud to disagree with one of Seraliane's earlier comments. The Ri'Eisc tried to shift up in the blanket pile Owain had made for him and only managed to really gain a few inches. It was enough for him to stare a bit more head on at the human. There wasn't notable disappointment at the cessation of the current book. More...well, maybe curiosity at having a conversation from hours before renewed. Especially a conversation that went unwanted. 

One on war, one on the 'peace' that followed- the way things twisted to the point that Flitchers roamed the water and bones and blood were stolen from the dead to sell as commodities on land. How supposed peace meant...what? How killing went normalized? How palaces went silent and rotted on islands humans would never bother with in need to start with?

How he, a human, would have no certainty or expectation of surviving a trip down to the cities below if he did manage to carry Seraliane there?

The Ri'Eisc called him an idiot and maybe he was. He was going to his death for someone that had to hate him-

"I could," Seraliane interrupted a stream of ranting. 

And Owain felt something akin to fear as he waited in the following silence for elaboration. As though he relied on hearing what the Ri'Eisc thought of him. As though that opinion defined his worth.

Maybe Seraliane could tell that. He kept his voice calm. Kept his eyes locked on Owain's and made sure they were flat enough to not be misread as anger.

"Could- hate me?" the human stammered. He'd meant to sound confrontational. Not- not let his voice crack alongside the charade of security. "I don't know why you wouldn't. Why anyone down there wouldn't, even if, by some wild chance, you don't. They'll know I was murdering and kill me for it." 

_Won't they?_

_Wouldn't you, if you had the means for it instead of needing me to feed and move?_

Seraliane clenched sharp teeth briefly before replying.

"Oh, I _can_ hate you for it. Flitchers- the entirety of them- I would be pleased to burn to the ground, to let the sea swallow. It is an occupation of murder that has taken so many of mine. Not as we did in our battles, but instead as animals. But you think I have not cut your kind down as animals either? There is no taste for it. And you find the same."

Now, he did. Only now. 

Only after dream and dream and dream after dream. Only when wet scaly hands wrapped around his arms and lips were at his ears and comprehensible human voices were whispering pleas for him to let them live.

Fake, of course. Ri'Eisc were always killed quick or injured enough from a head blow to not speak at all once on the bleeding floor. Had that made it stomachable all along? He felt sick, sick. 

No taste for it indeed. 

"Why?" Owain asked.

The alien mouth curled. Not quite a sneer, not a smile or frown. Something unpleasant, nonetheless.

"Why?" Seraliane laughed, a bitter sound. "Because we're here, aren't we? Because you didn't let yourself ignore what a mess I've become and did not see it as a reason to find yourself superior but instead to regret. You think I never noticed how ill you acted in that room, how often you fled from it?"

A flush of shamed embarrassment burned his skin. Still, Seraliane did not stop.

"I can hate Flitchers without bothering to wish you ill. You can take that much from me and that much alone."

And, feeling like an idiot, Owain heard himself repeat the word once more.

The grimace the other wore turned down further.

"Because you are still young and proven you are not stagnant yet. That you are willing to evolve. You change, you forgive."

It was Owain's turn to frown at that ill-defined declaration.

"Forgive? Who, you? The captain?" he interrupted.

"Yourself," Seraliane smiled sardonically. "Because chances are always higher others will not forgive you for you."

* * *

The palace found felt too empty. Its style wrong. Its walls alien. Owain supposed all of that was true. 

At least there were spiderwebs inside its halls. The architecture may have been strange and building material odd, but it was still full of air and had openings to the world outside. Creatures crawled their way in and made nests. It made its atmosphere significantly less unnerving to see.

Seraliane was quiet for the trip into this outpost. He'd been talkative enough on the empty beach while Owain struggled with the harness made to carry the Ri'Eisc behind him. There had been a few comments of amusement when he’d tripped over the scaly tail that hung from the harness. But when they'd actually reached the building, Seraliane had fallen into a silence only broken to explain how to enter doors or bypass locks. 

It lasted until they had made their way deeper down past the groundline into the tunnels built into earth and windows of the water beyond. If he could walk the whole way to a seafloor city, then this wouldn't be so impossible. Obviously, that would be too easy. Instead, the palace finally lost its halls with wide caverns where dark pools lay as exits into the sea outside.

"Are we close enough that I could hop in and get you somewhere?" Owain ask while poking his toes into the water of the last cavern's pool. Efforts to find another stairwell or deeper hall had failed. Every room explored on this lowest level ended in one of these chambers.

Behind him, Seraliane snorted.

"Unless you want me to turn into a mass that's gained a couple tons and crush you to death when I sink, no. Not a plan."

So he'd said to just about everything Owain tried to offer. It was getting to the point of irritation. 

As though he could sense the withheld anger, the Ri'Eisc tried to offer him an alternative instead. 

"I will shift if I enter deeper water, so you have no chance of moving me without a tunnel system and this isle obviously lacks one. But-" he cut off any frustrated reply "-these pools are not used merely as entrances or exits. They can be sat within and called through."

When asked for elaboration, Owain realized he'd meant _communication_. Water carried noise faster, longer, than a human's voice could be carried over wind. 

There was a brief question over if such a transformation would hurt with his injuries, but the Ri'Eisc refused to other much substance in response. It was his turn to be stubborn, Owain supposed. 

The harness was undone and he carried Seraliane past the shallow entry way to set him over the edge into the deepness. There was an eruption after. He'd backpedaled from the water even as some spilled in little waves over the floor. In the pool itself, somewhere, Seraliane sat against its floor and did his...'calls'...to let them carry out the exit to the nearest Ri'Eisc.

Owain wondered, briefly, if he should be gone before any arrived. But then, he could not be certain any would at all. He wouldn't be able to see this was through. So he would wait to make sure he was not just leaving Seraliane alone in this abandoned structure for help that wasn't coming.

Even if anyone answering that call would likely kill him for it.

He wasn't naive enough to think Seraliane would stand up for him. They'd been amiable enough, but what other option had there been? The former Regale needed help and angering the only option would have been sheer stupidity. Any comment on not hating him may or may not have been true, but not wishing revenge on him personally did not mean he actually mattered enough to stop any others from killing him.

It wasn't really a pleasant train of thought. Owain, as he had tended to for years, moved into ignoring it because of that and returned instead to staring over the water where Seraliane bobbed and sat as a lump.

The pool was large enough to fit a Ri'Eisc and its exit on the far end of its outer wall opened into the black of the sea, leaving the pool's water completely dark. The sight of living mass bobbing through and below the surface left him on edge. It couldn't have merely been from practiced reaction as a Flitcher. There was something innately nerve wracking about seeing evidence of a large, unknown mass in dark water. No matter if he knew what and who it was, the primal fear came at the sight unhelped. The silence of the underground chamber hardly helped him feel at ease.

Finally, the snaking form forced its way bluntly to the shallow edge and the touch of air left it shrinking. Owain rushed upwards to take hold of the shrinking body and tug it to the floor.

Both lay there after. He didn't bother asking if Seraliane had done whatever speech he'd wanted to. Didn't bother poking around or protesting or making his own advice when looking over that dark water and waiting for some sign of activity within it again. 

If this didn't work, Seraliane could laugh all he wanted but Owain would carry him in regardless of getting crushed and drowned from it. The only reason he hadn't yet was worry that it would mean leaving the other immobile on the silt of some seafloor away from the medical help of the Ri'Eisc.

It wasn't that he had a death wish or something.

He didn't plan to _die_ from this.

He just...

He wanted to do something right. 

Even if it did mean not making it back out of the water.


	3. If We Are Like You In The Rest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the same quality of plot as the last two chapters, that is, not a rational explained plot in sight at all
> 
> This is being posted late, after being written late, and is not beta'd. Mistakes at that point are pretty much inevitable, so here's my apology in advance

The first note he made was of his location.

Or rather, how very unknown that location was.

Owain could feel a mattress beneath him. Or something spongy, at any rate. There was a kerosene lamp hanging from a ceiling above him. It left a yellow light in an unknown room and the wave of a draft pushing at its chain left shadows to dance. 

It almost resembled the movement of lamps on a boat.

But he'd left his ship behind.

The sponge underneath him wasn't a proper hammock. Neither was it the bedding in the raft he'd been drifting in for who knew how long now with-

The Ri'Eisc. 

They'd been on some island, waiting by that unsettling pool. Owain's idea. Or one of many and the only one Seraliane had agreed on first. And there'd been a surge of water while he'd drifted off to sleep hours after the initial call; it'd soaked him, left him spluttering, and that was before the blades of bones were trying to take his head.

They were somewhere else now. Both Owain and Seraliane. A scan of the room showed a face he'd gotten familiarized with looking over a book at him.

From the looks of it, this was some sort of medical wing. 

Which left him on a bed and Seraliane...

The human pushed up to his elbows to look over the other. The Regale noticed and set the book aside. That wasn't right. He couldn't have held it in the first place.

So Owain said, in all eloquence possible: " _What_?"

There was a bark of laughter. The silence broken, Seraliane stood up to get a few feet closer. Not nearly enough to be in reaching distance, but that was a gap to be expected. By his own words, Seraliane didn't hate him. Owain didn't hate the Regale. That couldn't erase anything, so it could hardly be fondness. 

"We're in a private room, reserved for those who are recovering rather than those needing operation. You hardly needed one, but any guest in need of sleep deserves a bed and this kept you near my operation room, no?" Seraliane said with ease. Conversations on hate (lack thereof) or not, Owain didn't understand how he managed to keep that ease about him. 

But he neither understood how the other was standing nearby and that confusion took precedence.

"Aye, they got you down here, but how'd you- well-" Owain gestured bluntly at the obvious.

There was another laugh at that, this one carrying a bite he'd grown used to Seraliane's chuckles holding.

"Weren't you expecting this with all your pressure to get me down here?" he asked sarcastically. "You wanted me at my own doctors, and here I am."

There was a pause. The lamp wavered in the draft again. There was more air flow than Owain really expected a sea city to have. 

Seraliane turned to grab at the chair he'd waited in (and wasn't that an odd thought, that he was somehow worth waiting around for by _this man_ instead of happily ditched forever) and pulled it closer in order to better converse. After sitting, he lifted a new arm and spoke once more.

Discussed how Ri'Eisc pulled the bone that would extend in and out for a weapon all the way out permanently in order to encase it with this prosthetic. How it felt nothing that flesh would, but at least had working fingers and grip, unlike a human peg would. How the prosthetic would move with the bone like elastic, growing and shrinking alongside the shift in bodies a Ri'Eisc experienced.

How Owain was right to have assumed a creature with magic healing blood could at least do something for the injured.

There'd been doubts from the recovery team at that, days prior. He recalled one of those bones sticking towards his neck, remembered thinking he was about to die stabbed through as those Ri'Eisc he'd managed to harpoon did. And Seraliane had interrupted it. Kept the others from just disposing of the necessary evil in their presence, the lone human they'd needed to deliver the Regale to them but no longer held that use. 

Owain hated the fact he almost agreed with that. This loathing had nowhere else to go now, however. Not after leaving the Flitchers behind and the belonging it had enabled. Not after getting stuck in some room that may have held enough air for him to survive but likely was still buried in enough water or rock to imprison him, alive or not. Not after throwing in his lot with...what? A raft? That was never going to last solo. He'd never have lasted alone anyways. No one could. The captain had known that enough to send Owain to that room the first time because the Ri'Eisc inside would have deteriorated faster without anyone to see, a Flitcher or not.

So what was he expecting to do now? Not go back to the captain, even if he could somehow find that one boat amidst the sea. And not stick around after Seraliane got picked up either.

Except Seraliane had told the rest to back away and they'd done so. Argued, yes, but ultimately a Regale was a Regale. If royalty ordered you to step away, you did so first and complained after. 

Owain wondered if it was some sort of duty that had led to it anyways. A favor for favor, debt for debt, sort of thing. 

He'd wondered it all the way to his current location and hadn't ever been given the chance to ask Seraliane with all those others around.

There was a chance now. That fact only dug up more questions. Or just the one. The one wondering why the Regale -all those duties no doubt waiting to be caught up on, all those friends or family to reassure of his life- was sitting in here with his human 'guest' instead of attending to any of that. Owain felt a deja vu to the set up that didn't have as much nausea as he'd grown accustomed to when considering everything that had happened on the bleeding ship. Maybe it was the comments from days before, the assurance they'd somehow offered.

And still Seraliane waited. He was a Regale that doubtless had work to catch up on amidst his province. He wore fakes to replace the flesh Owain and his kin had stolen from him. He did not require to be lugged around in a sling in order to move or to wait for another to feed him in order to eat. 

He didn't require Owain anymore.

Yet he waited here still. Sitting in his seat, flesh and metal legs crossed, tail displacing sharp fins, clumsy hands reaching for his book once more. When Owain started to sit up, noting there was nothing physically restraining him to the berth, he heard the other speak without bothering to look up at him.

"You can't leave the room."

Ah. But he could live, and in one piece at that. Owain wasn't sure if he felt relief, resignation or gratitude about it all. He wasn't sure of much at all these days, outside an undefined desire to do something right.

So he laid back down on the bed instead of even bothering to explore his cell right then and there. Seraliane went back to silence. The words hadn't been apologetic, not at all. They hadn't been goading either. It was a confusing middle ground they'd gotten themselves stuck in.

Mismatched eyes glanced his way when the Ri'Eisc looked up from his book. Seraliane asked if he wanted to hear it aloud.

Owain could have laughed, could have cried. It felt so wrong. 

"Please do," he turned his face against the pillow to face the other, to show the little smile that refused to disappear. "I'd be most interested in seeing if your books down here are any more entertaining than the manuals we've been stuck with."

Sharp teeth returned his humor.

"It's the literature of a hospital, but I should hope it shall be. I wasn't half unconvinced you were trying to bore me on purpose with those," the Ri'Eisc replied.

It wasn't the truth on either of their parts. The books had been for stimulation. For distraction from wounds Owain could do nothing for. To keep the mind from falling into itself at those injuries's magnitude. 

A baseline, really, that some sort of genuine, if stilted, camaraderie had built upon.

And that, it appeared, still stumbled its way along when there was no longer a need for it.

* * *

The light of a kerosene lamp also wavered about a different room. This place was smaller; its walls lacked the basalt of those where Owain now sat. Boats could hardly build their walls of stone, after all.

The yellow luminescence shook frenetically across the peeling wood panels with the ship's movements. Bran Modred paid it no care. He was quite busy hitting his palm against his nightstand's surface. 

The splinters left behind had eventually torn little lines and dents into weathered skin. The captain hardly noted such. His thoughts were occupied by plans, thoughts, wild, stupid ideas. As if it was not foolish ideas that led him here to start with. No reason to consider that, laugh at ironic warnings. No reason...

No reason for the departure. No reason, not when it wouldn't end in anything better. Yet it had occurred regardless and he'd not seen it coming.

The hand hit the tabletop once more, left its specks of blood behind unnoticed entirely by its owner.

Slammed down. Lifted. Slammed again.

There was only one option he approved of. The rest of the crew would rather ignore it all, he expected. Ignore it or return to land. Certainly not give chase. 

He approved it though. He could not humor the thought, comprehend it, even, to return to the shore now or continue netting as normal. There was a crewmate lost. A-...no word for it, but one of whatever that word would be, lost as well. Both gone from his ship, his watch. Gone to face elements that would tear a lesser boat apart. No, it wouldn't do. It would not do. He would find them both, return them both, before death found them first.

His fists curled up on stinging skin. Laxed. Hit the wood. 

Decided.

* * *

It'd been a few weeks of home before anything ripped Seraliane back. 

A part of him had really hoped that, aside from the kid, there'd be no real reminders. That whatever boat _it_ had all happened on would float about and never cross his path.

It was a small part, all things considered. Seraliane supposed he didn't have the energy to expend to hopes like that. What happened, happened. If he had once fought a young human, hurt him badly, inadvertently started a vendetta that would return decades later, then he had. There was no changing that. There was no hoping it would go away if he ignored it.

So the disturbances that eventually circled their way back to his knowledge couldn't go ignored either.

Flitchers were a harsh reality and had been for years. Enough years, in fact, to grow used to their style. To tell Ri'Eisc which waters to avoid, what to check before surfacing, how to sense the signs. Seraliane's failure in that regard had been born of overconfidence. He'd sunk many a Flitcher vessel. The sense of one nearby had not forced him to full alert that night while he dozed because that confidence felt he would handle it if it did notice him nearby. If not, he'd sink it later when he felt more awake. Stupid of him. Too late to bother mulling over now.

But this-

The news, the descriptions, the curious comments all-

was so clearly not the norm. Not a style shown by those raiding humans. This was a message. An aggression. Flitchers waited in the dark, preyed on lone Ri'Eisc. They did not try to go for pods, no more than they attempted to find cities. It was suicide.

And Seraliane felt in his gut that he knew which fool human boat would attempt such a thing.

* * *

The thought was brought up that afternoon to the only true inside source he could ask.

But while Seraliane sat across a small table, the former Flitcher hummed thoughtfully against the hand he was using to hold up his jaw.

"It's weird, yes. Not the sorta activity a bleeder ship would be displaying. Doesn't mean your idea makes much sense though. I can't see why the captain would," Owain frowned. 

Saying 'it's a hunch' wouldn't sell anything. Gut feeling only went so far. And technically, he ought to defer to Owain's judgement on the likelihood here. Why else come tell him about the disturbances and his thoughts on them? He'd only witnessed this Modred man twice and it was only for blood's sake both times. Owain had been a crewmate under him for months and seen him plenty more times to predict his behavior better. 

"But could you tell what his plan was other times?" _With me?_ Seraliane prodded.

Checkmate. Owain's mouth opened and closed immediately to hum begrudgingly again.

* * *

A scout sent out returned with a decent description of the boat dropping charges in Ri'Eisc water. There hadn't been an interaction and the scout had been ordered to stay far enough back to not let the ship know it was being cornered. 

Other Regales may have wondered why.

Seraliane hadn't shared his reasoning. No more than he'd shared why he wore false fins and limbs and why there was a human in one of their seamount cities. If he were to be forthright in sharing, then he would need honesty or clever crafted lies and he had no energy for either.

Call it curiosity, here. 

Or something infectious from the boy. 

If the ship were not a Flitcher's, such vies for attention might have been attempts at acknowledgement for conversation; parley, pardon, amnesty, trade, whatever the case. If it were a Flitcher's, then it would be capsized without netting any prey because of its stupidity. If it were a _specific_ Flitcher's...then he wanted to see why. _Hear_ why. Wanted...not vengeance. The idea of slipping aboard that deck again was nauseating, but that wasn't a drive. What was he to do for vengeance anyways? Four cuts for one, a ship for four? How a catalyst spun out of control. 

When he next swam to the seamount to speak with the human, it was with confirmation on the pesky ship's identity. Owain, for his part, looked confused over why his former crewmates would attempt something so suicidal.

"Do you think they want you back?" he asked. "That they, that he knows you're here again and is trying to get your attention? Or for-"

He cut off, but Seraliane assumed the following words would have been aligned to " _me_ ". 

Despite knowing the identity now, he still hardly had any answers for the human's question. He was certain that he'd learn them soon. Before another Regale could offer to handle disturbances in _his_ territory.

If it was attention that Modred was after, he would get it.

He said as much, in vaguer words. 

"You gonna go kill 'em then?" Owain asked and Seraliane could not say what emotion it was spoken with. 

It was strange to him that the human seemed to lack such a problem. Owain seemed to read him well enough, even without Seraliane purposefully telegraphing an emotion forward to aid him. If he'd been able to see expressions so naturally, how had he managed to survive as long as he had gutting living beings? Owain implied he asked that of himself. Implied in oh so many words and sickness and a remorse so abrupt it was almost amusing to watch come over him.

But whatever the case, he didn't share such a gift. 

Could the comment have been pleading? Asking for his fellow human's lives? Could it have been resignation? An acceptance of their deaths with the knowledge they had as bloody hands as he did? Grief? Apathy? Goading? Recommendation? 

In truth, he wasn't even sure the human knew and perhaps that excused a part of Seraliane's inability to predict him. Owain's opinions on his former profession were obviously those of distaste, but what did that infer to the individuals that also shared it? 

"They _are_ in my waters. It'd be in my rights to if I decide so," Seraliane said instead of anything else. Casual. A half reassurance either way: if Owain would rather they die, then it was vaguely in that favor; if he hoped they survived, well, it didn't declare he would be killing them all.

There was already plenty of human blood on his blades. Just as there was Ri'Eisc blood on Owain's.

Some found such a thing intoxicating enough to dip deeper and deeper in. Others hoped that enough was enough and retreated from opportunities to shed more. 

He thought he knew where Owain lay on such and the youth of the man had been what had kept him living. Seraliane couldn't see him posing a threat to any Ri'Eisc again. Not with how he weighed himself down, not with how he likely hoped for some sort of absolution offered by those dead without realizing the dead and their living offered nothing. 

He thought of another human youth, asking to be spared agony. 

How he'd denied it then.

And of years that passed and passed, of how often he left cities and aides to swim alone, to savor isolation as though its dark would erase the cries. 

How Owain recognized early what that youth ignored, to stew in blood and await the day he'd prove stronger than the monster that defeated him once.

And how he could also, technically, consider such, mull on such, drown in such, but what purpose would that serve? What damage would that undo? 

No, he thought. He didn't suspect his plan was to kill them all no matter if it felt deserved.

* * *

It was hard to swim with his former grace, but Seraliane slipped underneath the boat without drawing attention. Slipping upwards meant shrinking down until the weight he held was no longer enough to turn the ship. 

There were no interruptions to scaling its side. No interruptions to finding the room across from the door that had once trapped him. 

There was not even a lock to keep him from entering. And here he had thought the human captain would be the paranoid type. But there were more concerning things to focus on now.

He couldn't summon a blade anymore. Still, no human would find it pleasant to get clawed at by a Ri'Eisc. Seraliane flexed sharp metal substitutes to show that threat. It wasn't an immediate move for the human, but warned him to keep a distance nonetheless.

Modred reached for the pistol in his holster but didn't point it just yet. No more than Seraliane lunged to tear at his throat.

Outside, no doubt shipmen went about their jobs. It would be easy to try to yell and bring them in. 

It would be easy, too, for those Ri'Eisc waiting in the water to attack. 

Overhead, the lamp jolted back and forth from its chain. 

Seraliane distantly wondered where the fear was, where the rage hid, where nausea waited to swell, and found nothing of the sort in return. 

He was tired. Not much more.

It was Modred who spoke first.

"I had wondered if you'd come back."

The Ri'Eisc's mouth curved in disgust.

"So this wasn't just a ploy to get one of your own returned," he replied. 

There wasn't much to take from Modred's reaction. Seraliane wasn't sure he'd had one. The human seemed exhausted. 

Evidently not exhausted enough to go retire rather than purposefully stir up trouble. 

"More of an attempt to find out if he even lives," Modred said. "And to hear what you told him in order to convince him to leave like that. It was hardly safer than remaining." The human's voice had lowered. "Just a way to endanger you both far more than staying here would have."

The _gall_. 

The gall he had, to call this ship _safety_. Only steps away was a floor of dried bloods where the chains he'd been strapped with undoubtedly remained. 

Seraliane bit the emotion back. Stepped sideways. Watched the human sidle opposite. Thought to change tactics.

"Why'd you give me the kid?"

"I didn't think you'd want to see me," the captain answered flatly.

He could have bit back a different emotion that time- kept in a laugh, at the least. 

"Not at all," Seraliane confirmed darkly.

"I didn't want to have to see you," Modred said on the heels of his own comment. "I couldn't- I couldn't. He seemed like a calm enough choice in my stead."

Almost amusing, to see it was not Owain alone he'd caused a crisis for. 

The line of metal meeting flesh burned. 

He'd come to accept Owain's regret; Modred's odd insistence, to himself likely, that the ship had been 'safe', Seraliane cared less to accept.

"And you expected me to wait there? To live out the rest of my life in one room, being hand fed and read to and watching the sea outside? I would have rather died," he spat.

There was no rise from the other. 

"I wondered."

"But you did not know," Seraliane did not bother to speak it as a question.

Modred tilted his head.

"No. It could have become palatable. It could have been your choice to live. I wasn't sure," he said.

Muscles burned under scales, burned, burned. Burned cold. As coldly absent as passion for this conversation or a fight both ran.

" _Hng_ ," Seraliane sneered. "You offered a choice to live, a fledging for caretaking, for stimulation in conversation, and you hid yourself away. I know why. Want to hear? You knew you were wrong. You knew you were repulsive, despicable. You knew, and know, I have every right to tear your throat from its skin shield."

There was no immediate reply.

There was no reply even after seconds passed into a minute. 

Seraliane stepped closer. This time, only a twitch of the hand on the gun signaled that the human noticed at all. His eyes were absent. Seraliane would know: he'd watched them, watch him. Never looked away. He'd not been able to watch, when he carved through a much younger Modred's leg. It seemed so odd to consider now how the human had managed vice versa. 

So odd, especially, since he refused to stare at the Ri'Eisc now. 

"You knew with this as well," Seraliane spoke again, dropping his voice to the quiet of a threat. "Knew that if it was vengeance or justice we're after, your crew will capsize along with yourself because we'd deserve to do such to you. Am I right?"

Still no response. 

He scoffed, then, just briefly before lunging up to shove the human against his room's wall. Metal gripped against the material of Modred's collar and squeezed. Seraliane brought his head close to the captain's, met the icy blue of the man's eyes.

"You wouldn't even fight it-" the Ri'Eisc hissed, "-would you?"

He could see teeth clench, jaw grit, could see the dare in the other's expression, the dare and resignation both. Wrong, that he could read that much from this human out of all those the species had to offer. Perhaps it was how much of a mirror it was. A mess of crimes, with no outlet known for regret. Perhaps no way to experience regret at all, but there was something confusing there tearing acts apart regardless. 

Disgusting.

"They would," Modred finally did speak, hissing right back at the one who held him precariously. "My crew. They would fight it. You won't need to kill them."

Blood on all their hands, on Modred's, on Owain's, on each Flitcher's; on Seraliane's, those he'd brought to wait outside, every Regale's. What made one worth letting go and another worth killing? 

Hands finally reached for his, though they failed to fight the hold well. It still shook him from thought.

Seraliane threw him, watched the captain crash against the walls of his cabin. Watched wood crack and rattle, watched dust fly. It must have hurt. That human was old and age weakened them.

He waited only briefly after throwing Modred before running from the room; upon reaching the deck, he leapt out, twisting, falling over the ship's edge.

Hit water and felt it envelop him, felt it make him right. Saw the world through sound so clearly; saw the rest awaiting his return. Awaiting an order to attack. So ready to let humans drown in return for those brethren bled. Mirror, mirror. Seraliane's tail flicked. 

Above, the Flitchers rushed to see the disturbance. There were spears now, more of those rare charges thrown in, some pointless nets that caught none. 

There was a brief scuffle over it all. It lasted until the ship's captain was on the deck with them all, yelling, shooting his own harpoons, tripping from the disorientation of being tossed minutes before. 

With his head out of the water's surface, Seraliane could hear those shouts. 

Yells to turn the boat, to flee (fool- they were far too surrounded to do so, though in the darkness human eyes would not see that). As though only now was it obvious that this had been suicide for the entire ship and Modred was trying to backstep (too late- but hadn't everything been too late? Seraliane's regret over using the human as bait so young in life came too late to stop decades of pain, pain for _him_ that night he'd been netted) from that fate. 

The ship did turn. The humans sounded frantic. Most would be in such danger. 

But Modred ignored them to climb to the forward of the boat to shoot from there. Seraliane twisted through the water to wait below that forward. Unconcerned. Unconcerned for them all, so long as so many Ri'Eisc were present. Modred shot the harpoon regardless and hardly seemed heartbroken to see it fall into black water instead of stab through hide. The Regale reared up while the captain was weaponless. And, rather than draw a pistol that would have left no marks, Modred stared him down. Mouthed at him over the spray of water and noise of chaos. 

_It was my idea alone._

So he had assumed. Only a captain had the rank to order stupidity and most crews hardly would want to go to such assured death.

Modred tugged a short blade free, glanced behind himself at those stumbling on the deck, and _jumped_.

There was nowhere to go but Seraliane's sneering maw or the black sea itself. 

Yet he jumped.

As though he planned to die from it.

The Ri'Eisc twisted frantically so that the human body crashed against scaley hide rather than into boney teeth. Grabbed the unmoving form, sang the water around it to move aside for bubbled air before the fool drowned.

Then he called to the rest. They retreated briefly from the surface to hear him. Those poles thrown after them slowed at impact and sank harmlessly into the water. 

_Don't turn the boat._

It was, clearly, not the order they'd wanted to hear.

_What?_

_Don't destroy it. Don't kill the humans,_ he elaborated.

One of the others bumped at him, confusion evident. They all acted so since his return. Acted as though he was too confused himself to be making decisions, though none were brave enough to actually challenge his right as Regale.

_But-_

_Circle it, pinch it, let them know that trying anything would kill them. Board it, break their spears, shred their nets. But make them wait there until I decide_ , Seraliane snapped.

He trusted they'd obey while he left to clear up his own problems here.

* * *

When Bran Modred awoke, it was to a soft surface. Not the swinging movement of a hammock, but a bed. 

There were straps on the bed. He didn't even give a cursory struggle against them. 

Standing at the foot of the berth was the Regale. 

"Did you kill them?" he asked, or attempted to. His throat ached and the words cracked.

Seraliane seemed to understand them regardless of their struggle.

"Not yet."

There was no elaboration. There was no questioning on Bran's part to find out more about his ship's precarious situation. 

"What do you say I do with you?" Seraliane broke the quiet. It was a musing statement. Not whimsical, but not outright threatening. 

No matter if Bran took it as a threat.

"Really, what am I expected to do?" the Regale continued. One glinting hand set itself down on the rail of the bed and such a posture seemed only to make the Ri'Eisc taller, shrink the human down. 

It slid from the rail to poke once at-

He could feel something wrong. The sensation of leather and wood that had long been accustomed to was now lacking. The human lifted his head to look at where his peg ought to have been and stared instead of the vague leg shape in its place. There was no sensation from it felt as Seraliane prodded it. No sensation to feel as the metal claw retreated back to the railing. No doubt there was no sensation felt for those claws either. 

The Regale's voice carried over his investigation of the lifeless limb attached to his leg.

"For one loss, you took four. Am I meant to deal out sixteen cuts now?"

It was inconceivable. Such exponential back and forth would kill one or the other far too quick. 

But Bran flinched at the idea regardless. 

Rather than taking advantage of such a thing, the Ri'Eisc let go of the bed altogether and stepped back. The distance was relieving. As relieving as it could be, when the tables had once again turned to place him in Ri'Eisc territory while helpless.

"It's far too late but- with your leg, that day- I am sorry," Seraliane said flatly.

Far too late.

Too late for both their sakes. What was the point of such an apology now? To hear the same from Bran about his own actions? The human did not want to vocalize those actions now, ever. He wasn't sure he could.

"And?" he growled instead, turning his face from his leg to the expressionless Ri'Eisc. "Words like that are easy. What do you want for it?"

Instead of any reaction he'd expect, the Regale smiled at him. It contained no humor.

"Nothing. It's happened, it's over. I forgive you. Can you believe that? I don't think you can. Because I saw it, in your eyes," Seraliane spoke through the smile, voice hissing through teeth and yet not quite hostile. More...knowing. It felt like defeat. "I saw it in them as you carved me apart. Saw that you wouldn't forgive yourself. So how could you believe I would, no matter the relief?"

He stepped away completely then, stood straight, walked from the room. From the cycle within it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potentially could've been more at the end going into what happens next to those like Owain (he would've been delivered back to land to attempt to start a new life), but this chapter was already too long and the story needed to just wrap up. Thanks to anyone who read.


End file.
